The interconnections between the various components of electronic systems must be made reliably with negligible loss of signal. This is especially true in aircraft whether it be a military or a commercial aircraft. The various interconnections include interconnections within a component, component to printed wiring substrate, assembly to heat-sink, module to motherboard, motherboard to backplane, backplane to system box, and box to box interconnection. Of these interconnections, the box to box interconnection is the key to high speed data transfer.
Communication links are now being provided that operate in the optical regime because such has greater band widths than are available in the RF or electrical regime and therefore can carry much more data along a single link. Commercial telecommunications companies are quickly installing such optical links for high data rate transmission and because of such use, components to carry optical signals and to convert electrical signals to and from the optical regime have become relatively economical, well-defined and easy to use.
In the aircraft industry, optical communication links are highly desirable since information can be carried in optical cables that are much smaller and lighter than the metallic electrical cables currently used in aircraft and problems, such as electrical cross-talk caused by close conductor spacing and vulnerability to electromagnetic fields, are eliminated. However, as with any conversion of new technology to the additional use in existing aircraft or to correspond to common aircraft design, there has been a need to provide optical connections at various locations throughout the aircraft so that the optical channels can be fed between electronic boxes, through bulkheads and other locations required in the aircraft structure. Commonly, glass fibers, used as the light transmission means (optical waveguide) are formed into a cable bundle. Heretofore, each fiber must have been individually broken out and connected to optical devices or optical connectors. Traditionally, most electronic devices are mounted onto planar printed circuit boards, whereas for size and mechanical efficiency it is desired to provide optical fibers in a generally circular cross-section cable.
Since it is time-consuming and labor intensive to make the optical connections within circular bulkhead style connectors commonly used throughout aircraft wiring systems, there has been a need to provide means to easily optically connect planar optical waveguide arrays or fibers to optical bulkhead feed-throughs, which are rugged, lightweight and relatively economical to manufacture.